"No," Avery said. "It did me good."

She was on the verge of saying something further, but the words did not come.

She continued to smooth out the little smock with minute care, while Mrs. Lorimer watched her anxiously.

"Is all well, dear?" she ventured at last.

Avery raised her brows slightly, but her eyes remained downcast. "I went to the wedding yesterday," she said, after a momentary pause.

"Oh, did you, dear? Stephen went, but I stayed at home. Did you see him?"

"Only from a distance," said Avery.

"It was a very magnificent affair, he tells me." Mrs. Lorimer was becoming a little nervous. She had begun to be conscious of something tragic in the atmosphere. "And did you enjoy it, dear? Or was the heat too great?"

"It was hot," Avery said.

Again she seemed to be about to say something more, and again she failed to do so. Her lips closed.

Mrs. Lorimer remained silent also for several seconds. Then softly she rose, went to Avery, put her arms about her.

"My darling!" she said fondly.

That was all. No further questioning, no anxious probing, simply her love poured out in fullest measure upon the altar of friendship! And it moved Avery instantly and overwhelmingly, shattering her reserve, sweeping away the stony ramparts of her pride.

She turned and hid her face upon Mrs. Lorimer's breast in an anguish of tears.

It lasted for several minutes, that paroxysm of weeping. It was the pent misery of hours finding vent at last. All she had suffered, all the humiliation, the bitterness of desecrated love, the utter despair of her soul, was in those tears. They shook her being to the depths. They seemed to tear her heart asunder.

At last in broken whispers she began to speak. Still with those scalding tears falling between her words, she imparted the whole miserable story; she bared her fallen pride. There was no other person in the world to whom she could thus have revealed that inner agony, that lacerating shame. But Mrs. Lorimer, the despised, the downtrodden, was as an angel from heaven that day. A new strength was hers, born of her friend's utter need. She held her up, she sustained, her, through that the darkest hour of her life, with a courage and a steadfastness of which no one had ever deemed her capable.

When Avery whispered at length, "I can never, never go back to him!" her answer was prompt.

"My dear, you must. It will be hard, God knows. But He will give you strength. Oh Avery, don't act for yourself, dear! Let Him show the way!"

"If He will!" sobbed Avery, with her burning face hidden against her friend's heart.

"He will, dearest, He will," Mrs. Lorimer asserted with conviction. "He is much nearer to us in trouble than most of us ever realize. Only let Him take the helm; He will steer you through the storm."

"I feel too wicked," whispered Avery, "too—overwhelmed with evil."

"My dear, feelings are nothing," said the Vicar's wife, with a decision that would have shocked the Reverend Stephen unspeakably. "We can't help our feelings, but we can put ourselves in the way of receiving help. Oh, don't you think He often lets us miss our footing just because He wants us to lean on Him?"

"I don't know," Avery said hopelessly. "But I think it will kill me to go back. Even if—if I pretended to forgive him—I couldn't possibly endure to—to go on as if nothing had happened. Eric—my first husband—will always stand between us now."

"Dear, are you sure that what you heard was not an exaggeration?" Mrs. Lorimer asked gently.

"Oh yes, I am sure." There was utter hopelessness in Avery's reply. "I have always known that there was something in his past, some cloud of which he would never speak openly. But I never dreamed—never guessed—" She broke off with a sharp shudder. "Besides, he has offered no explanation, no excuse, no denial. He lets me believe the worst, and he doesn't care. He is utterly callous—utterly brutal. That is how I know that the worst is true." She rose abruptly, as if inaction had become torture to her. "Oh, I must leave him!" she cried out wildly. "I am nothing to him. My feelings are less than nothing. He doesn't really want me. Any woman could fill my place with him equally well!"

"Hush!" Mrs. Lorimer said. She went to Avery and held her tightly, as if she would herself do battle with the evil within. "You are not to say that, Avery. You are not to think it. It is utterly untrue. Suffering may have goaded him into brutality, but he is not wicked at heart. And, my dear, he is in your hands now—to make or to mar. He worships you blindly, and if his worship has become an unholy thing, it is because the thought of losing you has driven him nearly distracted. You can win it back—if you will."

"I don't want to win it back!" Avery said. She suffered the arms about her, but she stood rigid in their embrace, unyielding, unresponding. "His love is horrible to me! I abhor it!"

"Avery! Your husband!"

"He is a murderer!" Avery cried passionately. "He would murder me too if—if he could bring himself to do without me! He hates me in his soul."

"Avery, hush! You are distraught. You don't know what you are saying." Mrs. Lorimer drew her back to her chair with tender insistence. "Sit down, darling! And try—do try—to be quiet for a little! You are worn out. I don't think you can have had any sleep."

"Sleep!" Avery almost laughed, and then again those burning, blinding tears rushed to her eyes. "Oh, you don't know what I've been through!" she sobbed. "You don't know! You don't know!"

"God knows, darling," whispered Mrs. Lorimer.

Minutes later, when Avery was lying back exhausted, no longer sobbing, only dumbly weeping, there came a gentle knock at the door.

Mrs. Lorimer went to it quickly, and met her eldest daughter upon the point of entering. Jeanie looked up at her enquiringly.

"Is anyone here?"

"Yes, dear. Avery is here. She isn't very well this morning. Run and fetch her a glass of milk!"

Jeanie hastened away. Mrs. Lorimer returned to Avery.

"My darling," she said, "do you know I think I can see a way to help you?"

Avery's eyes were closed. She put out a trembling hand. "You are very good to me."

"I wonder how often I have had reason to say that to you," said Mrs. Lorimer softly. "Listen, darling! You must go back. Yes, Avery, you must! You must! But—you shall take my little Jeanie with you."

Avery's eyes opened. Mrs. Lorimer was looking at her with tears in her own.

"I know I may trust her to you," she said. "But oh, you will take care of her! Remember how precious she is—and how fragile!"

"But, my dear—you couldn't spare her!" Avery said.

"Yes, I can,—I will!" Mrs. Lorimer hastily rubbed her eyes and smiled—a resolute smile. "You may have her, dear. I know she will be happy with you. And Piers is so fond of her too. She will be a comfort to you—to you both, please God. She comforts everyone—my little Jeanie. It seems to be her role in life. Ah, here she comes! You shall tell her, dear. It will come better from you."

"May I come in?" said Jeanie at the door.

Her mother went to admit her. Avery sat up, and pushed her chair back against the window-curtain.

Jeanie entered, a glass of milk in one hand and a plate in the other. "Good morning, dear Avery!" she said, in her gentle, rather tired voice. "I've brought you a hot cake too—straight out of the oven. It smells quite good." She came to Avery's side, and stood within the circle of her arm; but she did not kiss her or look into her piteous, tearstained face. "I hope you like currants," she said. "Baby Phil calls them flies. Have you seen Baby Phil lately? He has just cut another tooth. He likes everybody to look at it."

"I must see it presently," Avery said, with an effort.

She drank the milk, and broke the cake, still holding Jeanie pressed to her side.

Jeanie, gravely practical, held the plate. "I saw Piers ride by a little while ago," she remarked. "He was on Pompey. But he was going so fast he didn't see me. He always rides fast, doesn't he? But I think Pompey likes it, don't you?"

"I don't know." There was an odd frozen note in Avery's voice. "He has to go—whether he likes it or not."

"But he is very fond of Piers," said Jeanie. "And so is Caesar." She gave a little sigh. "Poor Mikey! Do you remember how angry he used to be when Caesar ran by?"

Avery suppressed a shiver. Vivid as a picture flung on a screen, there rose in her brain the memory of that winter evening when Piers and Mike and Caesar had all striven together for the mastery. Again she seemed to hear those savage, pitiless blows. She might have known! She might have known!

Sharply she wrenched herself back to the present. "Jeanie darling," she said, "your mother says that you may come and stay at the Abbey for a little while. Do you—would you—like to come?"

Her voice was unconsciously wistful. Jeanie turned for the first time and looked at her.

"Oh, Avery!" she said. "Stay with you and Piers?"

Her eyes were shining. She slid a gentle arm round Avery's neck.

"You would like to?" Avery asked, faintly smiling.

"I would love to," said Jeanie earnestly. She looked across at her mother. "Shall you be able to manage, dear?" she asked in her grown-up way.

Mrs. Lorimer stifled a sigh. "Oh yes, Jeanie dear. I shall do all right. Gracie will help with the little ones, you know."

Jeanie smiled at that. "I think I will go and talk to Gracie," she said, quietly releasing herself from Avery's arm.

But at the door she paused. "I hope Father won't mind," she said. "But he did say I wasn't to have any more treats till my Easter holiday-task was finished."

"I will make that all right, dear," said Mrs. Lorimer.

"Thank you," said Jeanie. "Of course I can take it with me. I expect I shall get more time for learning it at the Abbey. You might tell him that, don't you think?"

"I will tell him, darling," said Mrs. Lorimer.

And Jeanie smiled and went her way.



CHAPTER IX

THE GREAT GULF

"Hullo!" said Piers. "Has the Queen of all good fairies come to call?"

He strode across the garden with that high, arrogant air of his as of one who challenges the world, and threw himself into the vacant chair by the tea-table at which his wife sat.

The blaze of colour that overspread her pale face at his coming faded as rapidly as it rose. She glanced at him momentarily, under fluttering lids.

"Jeanie has come to stay," she said, her voice very low.

His arm was already round Jeanie who had risen to meet him. He pulled her down upon his knee.

"That is very gracious of her," he said. "Good Heavens, child! You are as light as a feather! Why don't you eat more?"

"I am never hungry," explained Jeanie. She kissed him and then drew herself gently from him, sitting down by his side with innate dignity. "Have you been riding all day?" she asked. "Isn't Pompey tired?"

"Caesar and Pompey are both dead beat," said Piers. "And I—" he looked deliberately at Avery, "—am as fresh as when I started."

Again, as it were in response to that look, her eyelids fluttered; but she did not raise them. Again the colour started and died in her cheeks.

"Have you had anything to eat?" she asked.

"Nothing," said Piers.

He took the cup she offered him, and drained it. There was a fitful gleam in his dark eyes as of a red, smouldering fire.

But Jeanie's soft voice intervening dispelled it. "How very hungry you must be!" she said in a motherly tone. "Will bread and butter and cake be enough for you?"

"Quite enough," said Piers. "Like you, Jeanie, I am not hungry." He handed back his cup to be filled again. "But I have a lively thirst," he said.

"It has been so hot to-day," observed Avery.

"It is never too hot for me," he rejoined. "Hullo! Who's that?"

He was staring towards the house under frowning brows. A figure had just emerged upon the terrace.

"Dr. Tudor!" said Jeanie.

Again Piers' eyes turned upon his wife. He looked at her with a sombre scrutiny. After a moment she lifted her own and resolutely returned the look.

"Won't you go and meet him?" she said.

He rose abruptly, and strode away.

Avery's eyes followed him, watching narrowly as the two men met. Lennox Tudor, she saw, offered his hand, and after the briefest pause, Piers took it. They came back slowly side by side.

Again, unobtrusively, Jeanie rose. Tudor caught sight of her almost before he saw Avery.

"Hullo!" he said. "What are you doing here?"

Jeanie explained with her customary old-fashioned air of responsibility: "I have come to take care of Avery, as she isn't very well."

Tudor's eyes passed instantly and very swiftly to Avery's face. He bent slightly over the hand she gave him.

"A good idea!" he said brusquely. "I hope you will take care of each other."

He joined them at the tea-table, and talked of indifferent things. Piers talked also with that species of almost fierce gaiety with which Avery had become so well acquainted of late. She was relieved that there was no trace of hostility apparent in his manner.

But, notwithstanding this fact, she received a shock of surprise when at the end of a quarter of an hour he got up with a careless: "Come along, my queen! We'll see if Pompey has got the supper he deserves."

Even Tudor looked momentarily astonished, but as he watched Piers saunter away with his arm round Jeanie's thin shoulders his expression changed. He turned to her abruptly. "How are you feeling to-day?" he enquired. "I had to come in and ask."

"It was very kind of you," she answered.

He smiled in his rather grim fashion. "I came more for my own satisfaction than for yours," he observed. "You are better, are you?"

She smiled also. "There is nothing the matter with me, you know."

He gave her a shrewd look through his glasses. "No," he said. "I know."

He said no more at all about her health, nor did he touch upon any other intimate subject, but she had a very distinct impression that he did not cease to observe her closely throughout their desultory conversation. She even tried to divert his attention, but she knew she did not succeed.

He remained with her until they saw Piers and Jeanie returning, and then somewhat suddenly he took his leave. He joined the two on the lawn, sent Jeanie back to her, and walked away himself with his host.

What passed between them she did not know and could not even conjecture, for she did not see Piers again till they met in the hall before dinner. Jeanie was with her, looking delicately pretty in her white muslin frock, and it was to her that Piers addressed himself.

"Come here, my queen! I want to look at you."

She went to him readily enough. He took her by the shoulders.

"Are you made of air, I wonder? I should be ashamed of you, Jeanie, if you belonged to me."

Jeanie looked up into the handsome, olive face with eyes that smiled love upon him. "I expect it's partly because you are so big and strong," she said.

"No, it isn't," said Piers. "It's because you're so small and weak. Avery will have to take you away to the sea again, what? You'd like that."

"And you too!" said Jeanie.

"I? Oh no, you wouldn't want me. Would you, Avery?"

He deliberately addressed her for the first time that day. Over the child's head his eyes flashed their mocking message. She felt as if he had struck her across the face.

"Would you?" he repeated, with arrogant insistence.

She tried to turn the question aside. "Well, as we are not going—"

"But you are going," he said. "You and Jeanie. How soon can you start? To-morrow?"

Avery looked at him in astonishment. "Are you in earnest?"

"Of course I'm in earnest," he said, with a frown that was oddly boyish. "You had better go to Stanbury Cliffs. It suited you all right in the spring. Fix it up with Mrs. Lorimer first thing in the morning, and go down in the afternoon!"

He spoke impatiently. Opposition or delay always set him chafing.

Jeanie looked at him with wonder in her eyes. "But you, Piers!" she said. "What will you do?"

"I? Oh, I shall be busy," he said. "I've got a lot on hand just now. Besides," again the gibing note was in his voice, "you'll get along much better without me. Avery says so."

"She didn't!" exclaimed Jeanie, with a sudden rare touch of indignation.

"All right. She didn't," laughed Piers. "My mistake!" He flicked the child's cheek teasingly, and then abruptly stooped and kissed it. "Don't be angry, Queen of the fairies! It isn't worth it."

She slipped her arm round his neck on the instant. "I'm not, dear Piers. I'm not angry. But we shouldn't want to go away and leave you alone. We shouldn't really."

He laughed again, carelessly, without effort. "No, but you'd get on all right without me. You and Avery are such pals. What do you say to it, Avery? Isn't it a good idea?"

"I think perhaps it is," she said slowly, her voice very low.

He straightened himself, and looked at her, and again that vivid, painful blush covered her face and neck as though a flame had scorched her. She did not meet his eyes.

"Very well then. It's settled," he said jauntily. "Now let's go and have some dinner!"

He kept up his light attitude throughout the meal, save that once he raised his wine-glass mockingly to the woman on the wall. But his mood was elusive. Avery felt it. It was as if he played a juggling game on the edge of the pit of destruction, and she watched him with a leaden heart.

She rose from the table earlier than usual, for the atmosphere of the dining-room oppressed her almost unbearably. It was a night of heavy stillness.

"You ought to go to bed, dear," she said to Jeanie.

"Oh, must I?" said Jeanie wistfully. "I never sleep much on these hot nights. One can't breath so well lying down."

Avery looked at her with quick anxiety, but she had turned to Piers and was leaning against him with a gentle coaxing air.

"Please, dear Piers, would it tire you to play to us?" she begged.

He looked down at her for a moment as if he would refuse; then very gently he laid his hand on her head, pressing back the heavy, clustering hair from her forehead to look into her soft eyes.

"What do you want me to play?" he said.

She made a wide gesture of the hands and let them fall. "Something big," she said. "Something to take to bed with us and give us happy dreams."

His lips—those mobile, sensitive lips—curved in a smile that made Avery avert her eyes with a sudden hot pang. He released Jeanie, and turned away to the door.

"I'll see what I can do," he said. "You had better go into the garden—you and Avery."

They went, though Jeanie looked as if she would have preferred to accompany him to the music-room. It was little cooler on the terrace than in the house. The heat brooded over all, dense, black, threatening.

"I hope it will rain soon," said Jeanie, drawing her chair close to Avery's.

"There will be a storm when it does," Avery said.

"I like storms, don't you?" said Jeanie.

Avery shook her head. "No, dear."

She was listening in tense expectancy, waiting with a dread that was almost insupportable for the music that Piers was about to make. They were close to the open French window of the music-room, but there was no light within. Piers was evidently sitting there silent in the darkness. Her pulses were beating violently. Why did he sit so still? Why was there no sound?

A flash of lightning quivered above the tree-tops and was gone. Jeanie drew in her breath, saying no word. Avery shrank and closed her eyes. She could hear her heart beating audibly, like the throbbing of a distant drum. The suspense was terrible.

There came from far away the growl and mutter of the rising storm. The leaves of the garden began to tremble. And then, ere that roll of distant thunder had died away, another sound came through the darkness—a sound that was almost terrifying in its suddenness, and the grand piano began to speak.

What music it uttered, Avery knew not. It was such as she had never heard before. It was unearthly, it was devilish, a fiendish chorus that was like the laughter of a thousand demons—a pandemonium that shocked her unutterably.

Just as once he had drawn aside for her the veil that shrouded the Holy Place, so now he rent open the gates of hell and showed her the horrors of the prison-house, forcing her to look upon them, forcing her to understand.

She clung to Jeanie's hand in nightmare fear. The anguish of the revelation was almost unendurable. She felt as if he had caught her quivering soul and was thrusting it into an inferno from which it could never rise again. Through and above that awful laughter she seemed to hear the crackling of the flames, to feel the blistering heat that had consumed so many, to see the red glare of the furnace gaping wide before her.

She cried out without knowing it, and covered her face. "O God," she prayed wildly, "save us from this! Save us! Save us!"

The man at the piano could not have heard her cry. Of that she was certain. But their souls were in more subtle communion than any established by bodily word or touch. He must have known, have fathomed her anguish. For quite suddenly, as if a restraining hand had been laid upon him, he checked that dread torrent of sound. A few bitter chords, a few stray notes that somehow spoke to her of a spirit escaped and wandering alone and naked in a desert of indescribable emptiness, and then silence—a crushing, fearful silence like the ashes of a burnt-out fire.

"And in hell he lift up his eyes." ... Why did those words flash through her brain as though a voice had uttered them? She bowed her head lower, lower, barely conscious of Jeanie's enfolding arms. She was as one in the presence of a vision, hearing words that were spoken to her alone.

"And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments...."

She waited quivering. Surely there was more to come. She listened for it even while she shrank in every nerve.

It came at length slowly, heavily, like a death-sentence uttered within her. "Between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence."

The words were spoken, the vision passed. Avery sat huddled in her chair as one stricken to the earth, rapt in a trance of dread foreboding from which Jeanie was powerless to rouse her.

The lightning flashed again, and the thunder crashed above them like the clanging of brazen gates. From the room behind them came the sound of a man's laugh, but it was a laugh that chilled her to the soul.

Again there came the sound of the piano,—a tremendous chord, then a slow-swelling volume of harmony, a muffled burst of music like the coming of a great procession still far away.

Avery sprang upright as one galvanized into action by an electric force. "I cannot bear it!" she cried aloud, "I cannot bear it!"

She almost thrust Jeanie from her. "Oh, go, child, go! Tell him—tell him—" Her voice broke, went into a gasping utterance more painful than speech, finally dropped into hysterical sobbing.

Jeanie sprang into the dark room with a cry of, "Piers, oh, Piers!"—and the music stopped, went out utterly as flame extinguished in water.

"What's the matter?" said Piers.

His voice sounded oddly defiant, almost savage. But Jeanie was too precipitate to notice it.

"Oh, please, will you go to Avery?" she begged breathlessly. "I think she is frightened at the storm."

Piers left the piano with a single, lithe movement that carried him to the window in a second. He passed Jeanie and was out on the terrace almost in one bound.

He discerned Avery on the instant, as she discerned him. A vivid flash of lightning lit them both, lit the whole scene, turned the night into sudden, glaring day. Before the thunder crashed above them he had caught her to him. They stood locked in the darkness while the great reverberations rolled over their heads, and as he held her he felt the wild beating of her heart against his own.

She had not resisted him, she did not resist him. She even convulsively clung to him. But her whole body was tense against his, tense and quivering like a stretched wire.

As the last of the thunder died, she raised her head and spoke.

"Piers, haven't you tortured me enough?"

He did not speak in answer. Only she heard his breath indrawn sharply as though he checked some headlong word or impulse.

She stifled a great sob that took her unawares, and even as she did so she felt his arms slacken. He set her free.

"There is nothing to be afraid of," he said. "Better come indoors before the rain begins."

They went within, Jeanie pressing close to Avery in tender solicitude.

They turned on the lights, but throughout the frightful storm that followed, Piers leaned against the window-frame sombrely watching.

Avery sat on a sofa with Jeanie, her throbbing head leaning against the cushions, her eyes closed.

Nearly half an hour passed thus, then the storm rolled sullenly away; and at last Piers turned.

As though his look pierced her, Avery's eyes opened. She looked back at him, white as death, waiting for him to speak.

"Hadn't you better send Jeanie to bed?" he said.

Jeanie rose obediently. "Good-night, dear Avery."

Avery sat up. Her hand was pressed hard upon her heart. "I am coming with you," she said.

Piers crossed the room to the door. He held it open for them.

Jeanie lifted her face for his kiss. An unaccustomed shyness seemed to have descended upon her. "Good-night," she whispered.

He bent to her. "Good-night, Jeanie!"

Her arms were round his neck in a moment. "Piers, thank you for your music, but—but—"

"Good-night, dear!" said Piers again gently, but with obvious decision.

"Good-night!" said Jeanie at once.

She would have passed out instantly, but Avery paused, detaining her.

Her eyes were raised steadily to her husband's face. "I will say good-night, too," she said. "I am spending the night with Jeanie. She is not used to sleeping alone, and—the storm may come back."

She was white to the lips as she said it. She looked as if she would faint.

"Oh, but—" began Jeanie, "I don't mind really. I—"

With a brief, imperious gesture Piers silenced her for the second time. He looked over her head, straight into Avery's eyes for a long, long second.

Then: "So be it!" he said, and with ironical ceremony he bowed her out.



CHAPTER X

SANCTUARY

"Hullo, sonny! You!"

Edmund Crowther turned from his littered writing-table, and rose to greet his visitor with a ready smile of welcome.

"Hullo!" said Piers. "How are you getting on? I was in town and thought I'd look you up. By Jove, though, you're busy! I'd better not stay."

"Sit down!" said Crowther.

He took him by the shoulders with kindly force and made him sit in his easy-chair. "I'm never too busy to be pleased to see you, Piers," he said.

"Very decent of you," said Piers.

He spoke with a short laugh, but his dark eyes roved round restlessly. There was no pleasure in his look.

The light from Crowther's unshaded lamp flared full upon him. In his faultless evening dress he looked every inch an aristocrat. That air of the old-Roman patrician was very strong upon him that night. But there was something behind it that Crowther was quick to note, something that reminded him vividly of an evening months before when he had fought hand to hand with the Evesham devil and had with difficulty prevailed.

He pushed his work to one side and foraged in his cupboard for drinks.

Piers watched him with an odd, half-scoffing smile about his lips. "Do you never drink when you are by yourself?" he asked.

"Not when I'm working," said Crowther.

"I see! Work is sacred, what?"

Crowther looked at him. The mockery of the tone had been scarcely veiled; but there was no consciousness of the fact in Crowther's quiet reply. "Yes; just that, sonny."

Piers laughed again, a bitter, gibing laugh. "I suppose it's more to you than your own soul—or anyone else's," he said.

Crowther paused in the act of pouring out. "Now what do you mean?" he said.

His eyes, direct and level, looked full at Piers. They held no anger, no indignation, only calm enquiry.

Piers faced the look with open mockery. "I mean, my good friend," he said, "that if I asked you to chuck it all and go round the world with me—you'd see me damned first."

Crowther's eyes dropped gravely to the job in hand. "Say when!" he said.

Piers made a restless movement. "Oh, that's enough! Strong drink is not my weakness. Why don't you answer my question?"

"I didn't know you asked one," said Crowther.

He set the tumbler in front of Piers and began to help himself.

Piers watched him for a couple of seconds longer, then leapt impulsively to his feet. "Oh, I'm going!" he said. "I was a fool to come!"

Crowther set down the decanter and straightened himself. He did not seem to move quickly, but he was at the door before Piers reached it.

He stood massively before him, blocking the way. "You've behaved foolishly a good many times in your life, my lad," he said. "But I shouldn't call you a fool. Why do you want me to go round the world with you? Tell me that!"

His tone was mild, but there was a certain grimness about him notwithstanding. He looked at Piers with a faint smile in his eyes that had in it a quality of resolution that made itself felt. Piers stood still before him, half-chafing, half-subdued.

"Tell me!" Crowther said again.

"Oh, what's the good?" With a defiance that was oddly boyish Piers flung the question. "I see I've applied in the wrong quarter. Let me go!"

"I will not," Crowther said. Deliberately he raised a hand and pointed to the chair from which Piers had just sprung. "Sit down again, sonny, and we'll talk."

Piers swung round with an impatient gesture and went to the window. He threw it wide, and the distant roar of traffic filled the quiet room like the breaking of the sea.

After a distinct pause Crowther followed him. They stood together gazing out over the dim wilderness of many roofs and chimneys to where the crude glare of an advertisement lit up the night sky.

Piers was absolutely motionless, but there was a species of violence in his very stillness, as of a trapped animal preparing to make a wild rush for freedom. His attitude was feverishly tense.

Suddenly and very quietly Crowther's hand came forth and linked itself in his arm. "What is it, lad?" he said.

Piers made a jerky movement as if to avoid the touch, but the hand closed slowly and steadily upon him. He turned abruptly and met Crowther's eyes.

"Crowther," he said, "I've behaved like a cur. I—broke that promise I made to you."

He ground out the words savagely, between clenched teeth. Yet his look was defiant still. He held himself as a man defying shame.

Crowther's eyes never varied. They looked straight back with a wide kindliness greater than compassion, wholly devoid of reproach.

"All right, Piers," he said simply.

Piers stared at him for a moment as one in blank amazement, then very strangely his face altered. The hardness went from it like a mask suddenly rent away. He made an inarticulate sound and turned from the open window.

A second later he was sunk in Crowther's chair with his head in his hands, sobbing convulsively, painfully, uncontrollably, in an agony that tore like a living thing at the very foundations of his being.

A smaller man than Crowther might have been at a loss to deal with such distress, but Crowther was ready. He had seen men in extremities of suffering before. He knew how to ease a crushing burden. He sat down on the arm of the chair and thrust a strong hand over Piers' shoulder, saying no word.

Minutes passed ere by sheer violence that bitter anguish wore itself out at last. There came a long, piteous silence, then Piers' hand feeling blindly upwards. Crowther's grip encompassed it like a band of iron, but still for a space no word was spoken.

Then haltingly Piers found his voice. "I'm sorry—beastly sorry—to have made such an ass of myself. You're jolly decent to me, Crowther."

To which Crowther made reply with a tenderness as simple as his own soul. "You're just a son to me, lad."

"A precious poor specimen!" muttered Piers.

He remained bowed for a while longer, then lifted at length a face of awful whiteness and leaned back upon Crowther's arm, still fast holding to his hand.

"You know, you're such an awfully good chap," he said, "that one gets into the way of taking you for granted. But I won't encroach on your goodness much longer. You're busy, what?" He smiled a quivering smile, and glanced momentarily towards the littered table.

"It will keep," said Crowther quietly.

"No, it won't. Life isn't long enough. On my soul, do you know it's like coming into sanctuary to enter a place like this? I feel as if I'd shut my own particular devil on the other side of the door. But he'll wait for me all right. We shan't lose each other on that account."

He uttered a laugh that testified more to the utter weariness of his soul than its bitterness.

"Where are you staying?" said Crowther.

"At Marchmont's. At least I've got a room there. I haven't any definite plans at present."

"Unless you go round the world with me," said Crowther.

Piers' eyes travelled upwards sharply. "No, old chap. I didn't mean it. I wouldn't have you if you'd come. It was only a try-on, that."

"Some try-ons fit," said Crowther gravely. He turned towards the table, and reached for the drink he had prepared for Piers. "Look here, sonny! Have a drink!"

Piers drank in silence, Crowther steadily watching.

"You would have to be back by March," he said presently.

"What?" said Piers.

It was like a protest, the involuntary startled outcry of the patient under the probe. Crowther's hand grasped his more closely. "I'll go with you on that understanding, Piers," he said. "You'll be wanted then."

Piers groaned. "If it hadn't been for—that," he said, "I'd have ended the whole business with a bullet before now."

"No, you wouldn't," said Crowther quietly. "You don't know yourself, boy, when you talk like that. You've given up Parliament for the present?"

"For good," said Piers. He paused, as if bracing himself for a great effort. "I went to Colonel Rose yesterday and told him I must withdraw. He had heard the rumours of course, but he advised me to hold on. I told him—I told him—" Piers stopped and swallowed hard, then forced himself on,—"I told him there was truth in it, and then—he let me go."

There fell a painful silence, broken by Crowther. "How did this rumour get about?"

"Oh, that was at Ina Rose's wedding." Piers' words came more freely now, as if the obstruction were passed. "A cousin of Guyes', the bridegroom, was there. He came from Queensland, had been present that night when I fought and killed Denys, and he recognized me. Then—he got tight and told everybody who would listen. It was rotten luck, but it had to happen." He paused momentarily; then: "I wasn't enjoying myself, Crowther, before it happened," he said.

"I saw that, sonny." Crowther's arm pressed his shoulder in sympathy. It was characteristic of the man to display understanding rather than pity. He stood ever on the same level with his friends, however low that level might be.

Again Piers looked at him as if puzzled by his attitude. "You've done me a lot of good," he said abruptly. "You've made me see myself as you don't see me, dear old fellow, and never would. Well, I'm going. Thanks awfully!"

He made as if he would rise, but Crowther restrained him. "No, lad. I'm not parting with you for to-night. We'll send round for your traps. I'll put you up."

"What? No, no, you can't! I shall be all right. Don't worry about me!"

Piers began to make impulsive resistance, but Crowther's hold only tightened.

"I'm not parting with you to-night," he reiterated firmly. "And look here, boy! You've come to me for help, and, to the best of my ability, I'll help you. But first,—are you sure you are justified in leaving home? Are you sure you are not wanted?"

"Wanted! I!" Piers looked at him from under eye-lids that quivered a little. "Yes," he said, after a moment, with a deliberation that sounded tragically final. "I am quite sure of that, Crowther."

Crowther asked no more. He patted Piers' shoulder gently and rose.

"Very well," he said. "I'll take that six months' trip round the world with you."

"But you can't!" protested Piers. "I never seriously thought you could! I only came to you because—" he halted, and a slow, deep flush mounted to his forehead—"because you've saved me before," he said. "And I was so—so horribly near—the edge of the pit this time."

He spoke with an odd boyishness, and Crowther's lips relaxed in a smile that had in it something of a maternal quality. "So long as I can help you, you can count on me," he said.

"You're the only man in the world who can help me," Piers said impulsively. "At least—" he smiled himself—"I couldn't take it from anyone else. But I'm not taking this from you, Crowther. You've got your own pet job on hand, and I'm not going to hinder it."

Crowther was setting his writing-table in order. He did not speak for a few seconds. Then: "I am a man under authority, sonny," he said. "My own pet job, as you call it, doesn't count if it isn't what's wanted of me. It has waited twenty-five years; it'll keep—easy—for another six months."

Piers got up. "I'm a selfish brute if I let you," he said, irresolutely.

"You can't help yourself, my son." Crowther turned calm eyes upon him. "And now just sit down here and write a line home to say what you are going to do!"

He had cleared a space upon the table; he pulled forward a chair.

"Oh, I can't! I can't!" said Piers quickly.

But Crowther's hand was on his shoulder. He pressed him down. "Do it, lad! It's got to be done," he said.

And with a docility that sat curiously upon him, Piers submitted. He leaned his head on his hand, and wrote.



CHAPTER XI

THE FALLING NIGHT

"You ought to rest, you know," said Tudor. "This sort of thing is downright madness for you."

They were walking together in the February twilight along the long, dark avenue of chestnuts that led to Rodding Abbey. Avery moved with lagging feet that she strove vainly to force to briskness.

"I don't think I do too much," she said. "It isn't good for me to be idle. It makes me—it makes me mope."

The involuntary falter in the words spoke more eloquently than the words themselves, but she went on after a moment with that same forced briskness to which she was trying to compel her dragging limbs. "I only ran down to the Vicarage after lunch because it is Jeanie's birthday. It is no distance across the Park. It seemed absurd to go in state."

"You are not wise," said Tudor in a tone that silenced all argument.

Avery gave a little sigh and turned from the subject. "I thought Jeanie looking very fragile. Mrs. Lorimer has promised that she may come to me again just as soon as I am able to have her."

"Ah! Jeanie is a comfort to you?" said Tudor.

To which she answered with a catch in her breath, "The greatest comfort."

They reached the great grey house and entered. A letter lay on the table by the door. Avery took it up with a sharp shiver.

"Prom Piers?" asked Tudor abruptly.

She bent her head. "He writes—every week."

"When is he coming home?" He uttered the question with a directness that sounded almost brutal, but Avery caught the note of anxiety behind it and understood.

She opened the letter in silence, and read it by the waning light of the open door. The crackling of the fire behind her was the only sound within. Without, the wind moaned desolately through the bare trees. It was going to rain.

Slowly Avery raised her head at last and gazed out into the gathering dark.

"Come inside!" said Tudor peremptorily.

His hand closed upon her arm, he almost compelled her. "How painfully thin you are!" he said, as she yielded. "Are you starving yourself of food as well as rest?"

Again she did not answer him. Her eyes were fixed, unseeing. They focused their gaze upon the fire as he led her to it. She sat down in the chair he placed for her and then very suddenly she began to shiver as if with an ague.

"Don't!" said Tudor sharply.

He bent over her, his hands upon her shoulders, holding her.

She controlled herself, and leaned back. "Do sit down, doctor! I'm afraid I'm very rude—very forgetful. Will you ring for tea? Piers is in town. He writes very kindly, very—very considerately. He is only just back from Egypt—he and Mr. Crowther. The last letter was from Cairo. Would you—do you care to see what he says?"

She offered him the letter with the words, and after the faintest hesitation Tudor took it.

"I have come back to be near you." So without preliminary the letter ran. "You will not want me, I know, but still—I am here. For Heaven's sake, take care of yourself, and have anything under the sun that you need. Your husband, Piers."

It only covered the first page. Tudor turned the sheet frowningly and replaced it in its envelope.

"He always writes like that," said Avery. "Every week—all through the winter—just a sentence or two. I haven't written at all to him though I've tried—till I couldn't try any more."

She spoke with a weariness so utter that it seemed to swamp all feeling. Tudor turned his frowning regard upon her. His eyes behind their glasses intently searched her face.

"How does he get news of you?" he asked abruptly.

"Through Mrs. Lorimer. She writes to him regularly, I believe,—either she or Jeanie. I suppose—presently—"

Avery stopped, her eyes upon the fire, her hands tightly clasped before her.

"Presently?" said Tudor.

She turned her head slightly, without moving her eyes. "Presently there will have to be some—mutual arrangement made. But I can't see my way yet. I can't consider the future at all. I feel as if night were falling. Perhaps—for me—there is no future."

"May I take your pulse?" said Tudor.

She gave him her hand in the same tired fashion. He took it gravely, feeling her pulse, his eyes upon her face.

"Have you no relations of your own?" he asked her suddenly.

She shook her head. "No one near. My parents were both only children."

"And no friends?" he said.

"Only Mrs. Lorimer. I lost sight of people when I married. And then—" Avery halted momentarily "after my baby girl died, for a long time I didn't seem to care for making new friends."

"Ah!" said Tudor, his tone unwontedly gentle. "You will soon have another child to care for now."

She made a slight gesture as of protest. "Do you know I can't picture it? I do not feel that it will be so. I believe one of us—or both—will die."

She spoke calmly, so calmly that even Tudor, with all his experience, was momentarily shocked. "Avery!" he said sharply. "You are morbid!"

She looked at him then with her tired eyes. "Am I?" she said. "I really don't feel particularly sad—only worn out. When anyone has been burnt—badly burnt—it destroys the nerve tissues, doesn't it? They don't suffer after that has happened. I think that is my case."

"You will suffer," said Tudor.

He spoke brutally; he wanted to rouse her from her lethargy, to pierce somehow that dreadful calm.

But he failed; she only faintly smiled.

"I can bear bodily suffering," she said, "particularly if it leads to freedom and peace."

He got up as if it were he who had been pierced. "You won't die!" he said harshly. "I won't let you die!"

Her eyes went back to the fire, as if attracted thereto irresistibly. "Most of me died last August," she said in a low voice.

"You are wrong!" He stood over her almost threateningly. "When you hold your child in your arms you will see how wrong. Tell me, when is your husband coming back to you?"

That reached her. She looked up at him with a quick hunted look. "Never!" she said.

He looked back at her mercilessly. "Never is a long time, Lady Evesham. Do you think he will be kept at arm's length when you are through your trouble? Do you think—whatever his sins—that he has no claim upon you? Mind, I don't like him. I never did and I never shall. But you—you are sworn to him."

He had never spoken so to her before. She flinched as if he had struck her with a whip. She put her hands over her face, saying no word.

He stood for a few moments stern, implacable, looking down at her. Then very suddenly his attitude changed. His face softened. He stooped and touched her shoulder.

"Avery!" His voice was low and vehement; he spoke into her ear. "When you first kicked him out, I was mean enough to feel glad. But I soon saw—that he took all that is vital in you with him. Avery,—my dear,—for God's sake—have him back!"

She did not speak or move, save for a spasmodic shuddering that shook her whole frame.

He bent lower. "Avery, I say, can't you—for the baby's sake—anyway consider it?"

She flung out her hands with a cry. "The child is cursed! The child will die!" There was terrible conviction in the words. She lifted a tortured face. "Oh, don't you see," she said piteously, "how impossible it is for me? Don't—don't say any more!"

"I won't," said Tudor.

He took the outflung hands and held them closely, restrainingly, soothingly.

"I won't," he said again. "Forgive me for saying so much! Poor girl! Poor girl!"

His lips quivered a little as he said it, but his hold was full of sustaining strength. She grew gradually calmer, and finally submitted to the gentle pressure with which he laid her back in her chair.

"You are always so very good to me," she said presently. "I sometimes wonder how I ever came to—to—" She stopped herself abruptly.

"To refuse me?" said Tudor quietly. "I always knew why, Lady Evesham. It was because you loved another man. It has been the case for as long as I have known you."

He turned from her with the words wholly without emotion and took up his stand on the hearth-rug.

"Now may I talk to you about your health?" he said professionally.

She leaned forward slowly. "Dr. Tudor, first will you make me a promise?"

He smiled a little. "I don't think so. I never do make promises."

"Just this once!" she pleaded anxiously. "Because it means a great deal to me."

"Well?" said Tudor.

"It is only—" she paused a moment, breathing quickly—"only that you will not—whatever the circumstances—let Piers be sent for."

"I can't promise that," said Tudor at once.

She clasped her hands beseechingly. "You must—please—you must!"

He shook his head. "I can't. I will undertake that he shall not come to you against your will. I can't do more than that."

"Do you suppose you could keep him out?" Avery said, a note of quivering bitterness in her voice.

"I am quite sure I can," Tudor answered steadily. "Don't trouble yourself on that head! I swear that, unless you ask for him, he shall not come to you."

She shivered again and dropped back in her chair. "I shall never do that—never—never—so long as I am myself!"

"Your wishes—whatever they are—shall be obeyed," Tudor promised gravely.

And with that gently but very resolutely he changed the subject.



CHAPTER XII

THE DREAM

How many times had he paced up and down the terrace? Piers could not have said. He had been there for hours, years, half a lifetime, waiting—waiting eternally for the summons that never came.

Could it have been only that morning that Mrs. Lorimer's urgent telegram had reached him? Only that morning that he had parted from Crowther for the first time in six months? It seemed aeons ago. And yet here he was in the cold grey dusk, still waiting to be called to his wife's side.

The night was fast approaching—a bitter, cheerless night with a driving wind that seemed to promise snow. It was growing darker every moment. Only her window shone like a beacon in the gloom. How long would he have to wait? How long? How long?

He had brought a doctor with him in obedience to Mrs. Lorimer's message, transmitting Tudor's desire. Tudor was not satisfied. He wanted Maxwell Wyndham, the great surgeon—a man still comparatively young in years but high in his profession—a man in whose presence—so it was said—no patient ever died. That of course was an exaggeration—some hysterical woman's tribute to his genius. But genius he undoubtedly possessed and that of a very high order.

If anyone could save her, it would be Maxwell Wyndham. So Piers told himself each time he turned in his endless pacing and looked at that lighted window. Tudor believed in him. And—yes, he believed in him also. There had been something in the great man's attitude, something of arrogant self-assurance that had inspired him with confidence almost against his will. He had watched him saunter up the stairs with his hands thrust into his pockets and an air of limitless leisure pervading his every movement, and he had been exasperated by the man's deliberation and subtly comforted at the same time. He was thankful that he had been able to secure him.

Ah, what was that? A cry in the night! The weird, haunting screech of an owl! He ridiculed himself for the sudden wild thumping of his heart. But would they never call him? This suspense was tearing at the very roots of his being.

Away in the distance a dog was barking, fitfully, peevishly—the bark of a chained animal. Piers stopped in his walk and cursed the man who had chained him. Then—as though driven by an invisible goad—he pressed on, walking resolutely with his back turned upon the lighted window, forcing himself to pace the whole length of the terrace.

He had nearly reached the further end when a sudden fragrance swept across his path—pure, intoxicating, exquisitely sweet. Violets! The violets that grew in the great bed under the study-window! The violets that Sir Beverley's bride had planted fifty years ago!

The thought of his grandfather went through him like a stab through the heart. He clenched his hands and held his breath while the spasm passed. Never since the night Victor had summoned Avery to comfort him, had he felt so sick a longing for the old man's presence. For a few lingering seconds it was almost more than he could bear. Then he turned about and faced the chill night-wind and that lighted window, and the anguish of his vigil drove out all other griefs. How long had he yet to wait? How long? How long?

There came a low call behind him on the terrace. He wheeled, strangling a startled exclamation in his throat. A man's figure—a broad, powerful figure—lounged towards him. He seemed to be wearing carpet slippers, for he made no sound. It was Maxwell Wyndham, and Piers' heart ceased to beat. He stood as if turned to stone. All the blood in his body seemed to be singing in his ears. His head was burning, the rest of him cold—cold as ice. He would have moved to meet the advancing figure, but he could not stir. He could only stop and listen to that maddening tarantella beating out in his fevered brain.

"I say, you know—" the voice came to him out of an immensity of space, as though uttered from another world—"it's a bit too chilly for this sort of thing. Why didn't you put on an overcoat?"

A man's hand, strong and purposeful, closed upon his arm and impelled him towards the house.

Piers went like an automaton, but he could not utter a word. His mouth felt parched, his tongue powerless.

Avery! Avery! The woman he had wronged—the woman he worshipped so madly—for whom his whole being mental and physical craved desperately, yearning, unceasingly,—without whom he lived in a torture that was never dormant! Avery! Avery! Was she lying dead behind that lighted window? If so, if so, those six months of torment had been in vain. He would end his misery swiftly and finally before it turned his brain.

Maxwell Wyndham was guiding him towards the conservatory where a dim light shone. It was like an altar-flame in the darkness—that place where first their lips had met. The memory of that night went through him like a sword-thrust. Oh, Avery! Oh, Avery!

"Now look here," said Maxwell Wyndham, in his steady, emotionless voice; "you're wanted upstairs, but you can't go unless you are absolutely sure of yourself."

Wanted! His senses leapt to the word. Instinctively he pulled himself together, collecting all his strength. He spoke, and found to his surprise that speech was not difficult.

"She has asked for me?"

"Yes; but," Wyndham's tone was impressive, "I warn you, she is not altogether herself. And—she is very desperately ill."

"The child?" questioned Piers.

"The child never breathed." Curt and cold came the answer. "I have had to concentrate all my energies upon saving the mother's life, and—to be open with you—I don't think I have succeeded. There is still a chance, but—" He left the sentence unfinished.

They had reached the conservatory, and, entering, it was Piers who led the way. His face, as they emerged into the library, was deathly, but he was absolute master of himself.

"I believe there is a meal in the dining-room," he said. "Will you help yourself while I go up?"

"No," said Wyndham briefly. "I am coming up with you."

He kept a hand upon Piers' arm all the way up the stairs, deliberately restraining him, curbing the fevered impetuosity that urged him with a grim insistence that would not yield an inch to any chafing for freedom.

He gave utterance to no further injunctions, but his manner was eloquent of the urgent need for self-repression. When Piers entered his wife's room, that room which he had not entered since the night of Ina's wedding, his tread was catlike in its caution, and all the eagerness was gone from his face.

Then only did the doctor's hand fall from him, so that he advanced alone.

She was lying on one side of the great four-poster, straight and motionless as a recumbent figure on a tomb. Her head was in deep shadow. He could see her face only in vaguest outline.

Softly he approached, and Mrs. Lorimer, rising silently from a chair by the bedside, made room for him. He sat down, sinking as it were into a great abyss of silence, listening tensely, but hearing not so much as a breath.

The doctor took up his stand at the foot of the bed. In the adjoining room sat Lennox Tudor, watching ceaselessly, expectantly, it seemed to Piers. Behind him moved a nurse, noiselessly intent upon polishing something that flashed like silver every time it caught his eye.

Suddenly out of the silence there came a voice. "If I go down to hell,—Thou art there also. If I take the wings of the morning—the wings of the morning—" There came a pause, the difficult pause of uncertainty—"the wings of the morning—" murmured the voice again.

Piers leaned upon the pillow. "Avery!" he said.

She turned as if some magic moved her. Her hands came out to him, piteously weak and trembling. "Piers,—my darling!" she said.

He gathered the poor nerveless hands into a tight clasp, kissing them passionately. He forgot the silent watcher at the foot of the bed, forgot little Mrs. Lorimer hovering in the shadows, and Tudor waiting with the nurse behind him. They all slipped into nothingness, and Avery—his wife—alone remained in a world that was very dark.

Her voice came to him in a weak whisper. "Oh, Piers, I've been—wanting you so!"

"My own darling!" he whispered back. "I will never leave you again!"

"Oh yes, you will!" she answered drearily. "You always say that, but you are always gone in the morning. It's only a dream—only a dream!"

He slipped his arms beneath her and drew her to his breast. "It is not a dream, Avery," he told her very earnestly. "I am here in the flesh. I am holding you."

"I know," she said. "It's always so."

The weary conviction of her tone smote cold to his heart. He gathered her closer still. He pressed his lips to her forehead.

"Avery, can't you feel me?" he said.

Her head sank against his shoulder. "Yes—yes," she said. "But you have always done that."

"Done what, darling?"

"Imposed your will on mine—made me feel you." Her voice quivered; she began to cry a little, weakly, like a tired child. "Do you remember—what you said—about—about—the ticket of leave?" she said. "You leave your dungeon—my poor Piers. But you have to go back again—when the leave has expired. And I—I am left alone."

The tears were running down her face. He wiped them tenderly away.

"My dearest, if you want me—if you need me,—I will stay," he said.

"But you can't," she said hopelessly. "Even to-night—even to-night—I thought you were never coming. And I went at last to look for you—behind your iron bars. But, oh, Piers, the agony of it! And I couldn't reach you after all, though I tried so hard—so hard."

"Never mind, my darling!" he whispered. "We are together now."

"But we shan't be when the morning comes," sobbed Avery. "I know it is all a dream. It's happened so many, many times."

He clasped her closer, hushing her with tender words, vowing he would never leave her, while the Shadow of Death gathered closer about them, threatening every instant to come between.

She grew calmer at last, and presently sank into a state of semi-consciousness lying against his breast.

Time passed. Piers did not know how it went. With his wife clasped in his arms he sat and waited, waited—for the falling of a deeper night or the coming of the day—he knew not which. His brain felt like a stopped watch; it did not seem to be working at all. Even the power to suffer seemed to have left him. He felt curiously indifferent, strangely submissive to circumstances,—like a man scourged into the numbness of exhaustion. He knew at the back of his mind that as soon as his vitality reasserted itself the agony would return. The respite could not last, but while it lasted he knew no pain. Like one in a state of coma, he was not even aware of thought.

It might have been hours later, or possibly only minutes, that Maxwell Wyndham came round to his side and bent over him, a quiet hand on his shoulder.

"You had better lay her down," he said. "She won't wake now."

"What?" said Piers sharply.

The words had stabbed him back to understanding in a second. He glared at the doctor with eyes half-savage, half-frightened.

"No, no!" said Wyndham gently. "I don't mean that. She is asleep. She is breathing. But she will rest better if you lay her down."

The absolute calmness with which he spoke took effect upon Piers. He yielded, albeit not very willingly, to the mandate.

They laid her down upon the pillow between them, and then for many seconds Wyndham stood, closely watching, almost painfully intent. Piers waited dumbly, afraid to move, afraid to speak.

The doctor turned to him at last. "What about that meal you spoke of? Shall we go down and get it?"

Piers stared at him. "I am not leaving her," he said in a quick whisper.

Wyndham's hand was on his shoulder again—a steady, compelling hand. "Oh yes, you are. I want to talk to you," he said. "She is sleeping naturally, and she won't wake for some time. Come!"

There was nothing peremptory about him, yet he gained his end. Piers rose. He hung for a moment over the bed, gazing hungrily downwards upon the shadowy, motionless form, then in silence turned.

Tudor had risen. He met them in the doorway, and between him and the London doctor a few words passed. Then the latter pushed his hand through Piers' arm, and drew him away.

They descended the wide oak stairs together and entered the dining-room. Piers moved like a man dazed. His companion went straight to the table and poured out a drink, which he immediately held out to Piers, looking at him with eyes that were green and very shrewd.

"I think we shall save her," he said.

Piers drank in great gulps, and came to himself. "I say, I'm beastly rude!" he said, with sudden boyishness. "For goodness' sake, help yourself! Sit down, won't you?"

Maxwell Wyndham seated himself with characteristic deliberation of movement. He had fiery red hair that shone brazenly in the lamplight.

"I can't eat by myself, Sir Piers," he remarked, after a moment. "And it isn't particularly good for you to drink without eating either, in your present frame of mind."

Piers sat down, his attitude one of intense weariness. "You really think she'll pull through?" he said.

"I think so," Wyndham answered. "But it won't be a walk over. She will be ill for a long time."

"I'll take her away somewhere," said Piers. "A quiet time at the sea will soon pick her up."

Maxwell Wyndham said nothing.

Piers glanced at him with quick impatience. "Don't you advise that?"

The green eyes countered his like the turn of a swordblade. "Certainly quiet is essential," said Wyndham enigmatically.

Piers made a chafing movement. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," very calmly came the answer, "that if you really value your wife's welfare, you will let someone else take her away."

It was a straight thrust, and it went home. Piers flinched sharply. But in a moment he had recovered himself. He was on guard. He looked at Wyndham with haughty enquiry.

"Why do you say that?"

"Because her peace of mind depends upon it." Wyndham's answer came with brutal directness. "You will find, when this phase of extreme weakness is past, that your presence is not desired. She may try to hide it from you. That depends upon the kind of woman she is. But the fact will remain—does remain—that for some reason best known to yourself, she shrinks from you. I am not speaking rashly without knowledge. When a woman is in agony she can't help showing her soul. I saw your wife's soul to-day."

Piers was white to the lips. He sat rigid, no longer looking at the doctor, but staring beyond him fixedly at a woman's face on the wall that smiled and softly mocked.

"What did she say to you?" he said, after a moment.

"She said," curtly Wyndham made reply,—"it was at a time when she could hardly speak at all—'Even if I ask for my husband, don't send—don't send!'"

"Yet you fetched me!" Piers' eyes came swiftly back to him; they shone with a fierce glint.

But Wyndham was undismayed. "I fetched you to save her life," he said. "There was nothing else to be done. She was in delirium, and nothing else would calm her."

"And she wanted me!" said Piers. "She begged me to stay with her!"

"I know. It was a passing phase. When her brain is normal, she will have forgotten."

Piers sprang to his feet with sudden violence. "But—damn it—she is my wife!" he cried out fiercely.

Maxwell Wyndham leaned across the table. "She is your wife—yes," he said. "But isn't that a reason for considering her to the very utmost? Have you always done that, I wonder? No, don't answer! I've no right to ask. Only—you know, doctors are the only men in the world who know just what women have to put up with, and the knowledge isn't exactly exhilarating. Give her a month or two to get over this! You won't be sorry afterwards."

It was kindly spoken, so kindly that the flare of anger died out of Piers on the instant, and the sweetness dormant in him—that latent sweetness that had won Avery's heart—came swiftly to the surface.

He threw himself down again, looking into the alert, green eyes with an oddly rueful smile. "All right, doctor!" he said. "I shan't go to her if she doesn't want me. But I've got to make sure she doesn't, haven't I? What?"

There was a wholly unconscious note of pathos in the last word that sent the doctor's mouth up at one corner in a smile that was more pitying than humorous. "I should certainly do that," he said. "But I'm afraid you'll find I've told you the beastly truth."

"For which I am obliged to you," said Piers, with a bow.



CHAPTER XIII

THE HAND OF THE SCULPTOR

During the week that followed, no second summons came to Piers from his wife's room. He hung about the house, aimless, sick at heart, with hope sinking ever lower within him like a fire dying for lack of replenishment.

He could neither sleep nor eat, and Victor watched him with piteous though unspoken solicitude. Victor knew the wild, undisciplined temperament of the boy he had cherished from his cradle, and he lived in hourly dread of some sudden passionate outburst of rebellion, some desperate act that should lead to irremediable disaster. He had not forgotten that locked drawer in the old master's bureau or the quick release it contained, and he never left Piers long alone in its vicinity.

But he need not have been afraid. Piers' thoughts never strayed in that direction. If his six months in Crowther's society had brought him no other comfort, they had at least infused in him a saner outlook and steadier balance. Very little had ever passed between them on the subject of the tragedy that had thrown them together. After the first bitter outpouring of his soul, Piers had withdrawn himself with so obvious a desire for privacy that Crowther had never attempted to cross the boundary thus clearly defined. But his influence had made itself felt notwithstanding. It would have been impossible to have lived with the man for so long without imbibing some of that essential greatness of soul that was his main characteristic, and Piers was ever swift to feel the effect of atmosphere. He had come to look upon Crowther with a reverence that in a fashion affected his daily life. That which Crowther regarded as unworthy, he tossed aside himself without consideration. Crowther had not despised him at his worst, and he was determined that he would show himself to be not despicable. He was moreover under a solemn promise to return to Crowther when he found himself at liberty, and in very gratitude to the man he meant to keep that promise.

But, albeit he was braced for endurance, the long hours of waiting were very hard to bear. His sole comfort lay in the fact that Avery was making gradual progress in the right direction. It was a slow and difficult recovery, as Maxwell Wyndham had foretold, but it was continuous. Tudor assured him of this every day with a curt kindliness that had grown on him of late. It was his own fashion of showing a wholly involuntary sympathy of which he was secretly half-ashamed, and which he well knew Piers would have brooked in no other form. It established an odd sort of truce between them of which each was aware the while he sternly ignored it. They could never be friends. It was fundamentally impossible, but at least they had, if only temporarily, ceased to be enemies.

Little Mrs. Lorimer's sympathy was also of a half-ashamed type. She did not want to be sorry for Piers, but she could not wholly restrain her pity. The look in his eyes haunted her. Curiously it made her think of some splendid animal created for liberty, and fretting its heart out in utter, hopeless misery on a chain.

She longed with all her motherly heart to comfort him, and by the irony of circumstance it fell to her to deal the final blow to what was left of his hope. She wondered afterwards how she ever brought herself to the task, but it was in reality so forced upon her that she could not evade it. Avery, lying awake during the first hours of a still night, heard her husband's feet pacing up and down the terrace, and the mischief was done. She was thrown into painful agitation and wholly lost her sleep in consequence. When Mrs. Lorimer arrived about noon on the following day, she found her alarmingly weak, and the nurse in evident perplexity.

"I am sure there is something worrying her," the latter said to Mrs. Lorimer. "I can't think what it is."

But directly Mrs. Lorimer was alone with Avery, the trouble came out. For she reached out fevered hands to her, saying, "Why, oh, why did you persuade me to come back here? I knew he would come if I did!"

Again the emergency impelled Mrs. Lorimer to a display of common-sense with which few would have credited her.

"Oh, do you mean Piers, dear?" she said. "But surely you are not afraid of him! He has been here all the time—ever since you were so ill."

"And I begged you not to send!" groaned Avery.

"My dear," said Mrs. Lorimer very gently, "it was his right to be here."

"Then that night—that night—" gasped Avery, "he really did come to me—that night after the baby was born."

"My darling, you begged for him so piteously," said Mrs. Lorimer apologetically.

Avery's lip quivered. "That was just what I feared—what I wanted to make impossible," she said. "When one is suffering, one forgets so."

"But surely it was the cry of your heart, darling," urged Mrs. Lorimer tremulously. "And do you know—poor lad—he looks so ill, so miserable."

But Avery's face was turned away. "I can't help it," she said. "I can't—possibly—see him again. I feel as if—as if there were a curse upon us both, and that is why the baby died. Oh yes, morbid, I know; perhaps wrong. But—I have been steeped in sin. I must be free for a time. I can't face him yet. I haven't the strength."

"Dearest, he will never force himself upon you," said Mrs. Lorimer.

Avery's eyes went instinctively to the door that led into the room that Piers had occupied after his marriage. The broken bolt had been removed, but not replaced. A great shudder went through her. She covered her face with her hands.

"Oh, beg him—beg him to go away," she sobbed, "till I am strong enough to go myself!"

Argument was useless. Mrs. Lorimer abandoned it with the wisdom born of close friendship. Instead, she clasped Avery tenderly to her and gave herself to the task of calming her distress.

And when that was somewhat accomplished, she left her to go sadly in search of Piers.

She found him sitting on the terrace with the morning-paper beside him and Caesar pressed close to his legs, his great mottled head resting on his master's knee.

He was not reading. So much Mrs. Lorimer perceived before with a sharp turn of the head he discovered her. He was on his feet in a moment, and she saw his boyish smile for an instant, only for an instant, as he came to meet her. She noted with a pang how gaunt he looked and how deep were the shadows about his eyes. Then he had reached her, and was holding both her hands almost before she realized it.

"I say, you're awfully good to come up every day like this," he said. "I can't think how you make the time. Splendid sun to-day, what? It's like a day in summer, if you can get out of the wind. Come and bask with me!"

He drew her along the terrace to his sheltered corner, and made her sit down, spreading his newspaper on the stone seat for her accommodation. Her heart went out to him as he performed that small chivalrous act. She could not help it. And suddenly the task before her seemed so monstrous that she felt she could not fulfil it. The tears rushed to her eyes.

"What's the matter?" said Piers gently. He sat down beside her, and slipped an encouraging hand through her arm. "Was it something you came out to say? Don't mind me! You don't, do you?"

His voice was softly persuasive. He leaned towards her, his dark eyes searching her face. Mrs. Lorimer felt as if she were about to hurt a child.

She blew her nose, dried her eyes, and took the brown hand very tightly between her own. "My dear, I'm so sorry for you—so sorry for you both!" she said.

A curious little glint came and went in the eyes that watched her. Piers' fingers closed slowly upon hers.

"I've got to clear out, what?" he said.

She nodded mutely; she could not say it.

He was silent awhile; then: "All right," he said. "I'll go this afternoon."

His voice was dead level, wholly emotionless, but for a few seconds his grip taxed her endurance to the utmost. Then, abruptly, it relaxed.

He bent his black head and kissed the nervous little hands that were clasped upon his own.

"Don't you fret now!" he said, with an odd kindness that was to her more pathetic than any appeal for sympathy. "You've got enough burdens of your own to bear without shouldering ours. How is Jeanie?"

Mrs. Lorimer choked down a sob. "She isn't a bit well. She has a cold and such a racking cough. I'm keeping her in bed."

"I'm awfully sorry," said Piers steadily. "Give her my love! And look here, when Avery is well enough, let them go away together, will you? It will do them both good."

"It's dear of you to think of it," said Mrs. Lorimer wistfully. "Yes, it did do Jeanie good in the autumn. But Avery—"

"It will do Avery good too," he said. "She can take that cottage at Stanbury Cliffs for the whole summer if she likes. Tell her to! And look here! Will you take her a message from me?"

"A written message?" asked Mrs. Lorimer.

He pulled out a pocket-book. "Six words," he said. He scrawled them, tore out the leaf and gave it to her, holding it up before her eyes that she might read it.

"Good-bye till you send for me. Piers."

"That's all," he said. "Thanks awfully. She'll understand that. And now—I say, you're not going to cry any more, are you?" He shook his head at her with a laugh in his eyes. "You really mustn't. You're much too tender-hearted. I say, it was a pity about the baby, what? I thought the baby might have made a difference. But it'll be all the same presently. She's wanting me really. I've known that ever since that night—you know—ever since I held her in my arms."

He spoke with absolute simplicity. She had never liked him better than at that moment. His boyishness had utterly disarmed her, and not till later did she realize how completely he had masked his soul therewith.

She parted with him with a full heart, and had a strictly private little cry on his account ere she returned to Avery. Poor lad! Poor lad! And when he wasn't smiling, he did look so ill!

The same thought struck Crowther a few hours later as Piers sat with him in his room, and devoted himself with considerable adroitness to making his fire burn through as quickly as possible, the while he briefly informed him that his wife was considered practically out of danger and had no further use for him for the present.

Crowther's heart sank at the news though he gave no sign of dismay.

"What do you think of doing, sonny?" he asked, after a moment.

"I? Why, what is there for me to do?" Piers glanced round momentarily. "I wonder what you'd do, Crowther," he said, with a smile that was scarcely gay.

Crowther came to his side, and stood there massively, while he filled his pipe. "Piers," he said, "I presume she knows all there is to know of that bad business?"

Piers rammed the poker a little deeper into the fire and said nothing.

But Crowther had broken through the barricade of silence at last, and would not be denied.

"Does she know, Piers?" he insisted. "Did you ever tell her how the thing came to pass? Does she know that the quarrel was forced upon you—that you took heavy odds—that you did not of your own free will avoid the consequences? Does she know that you loved her before you knew who she was?"

He paused, but Piers remained stubbornly silent, still prodding at the red coals.

He bent a little, taking him by the shoulder. "Piers, answer me!"

Again Piers' eyes glanced upwards. His face was hard. "Oh, get away, Crowther!" he growled. "What's the good?" And then in his winning way he gripped Crowther's hand hard. "No, I never told her anything," he said. "And I made it impossible for her to ask. I couldn't urge extenuating circumstances because there weren't any. Moreover, it wouldn't have made a ha'porth's difference if I had. So shunt the subject like a good fellow! She must take me at my worst—at my worst, do you hear?—or not at all."

"But, my dear lad, you owe it to her," began Crowther gravely.

Piers cut him short with a recklessness that scarcely veiled the pain in his soul. "No, I don't! I don't owe her anything. She doesn't think any worse of me than I am. She knows me jolly well,—better than you do, most worthy padre-elect. If she ever forgives me, it won't be because she thinks I've been punished enough, but just because she is my mate,—and she loves me." His voice sank upon the words.

"And you are going to wait for that?" said Crowther.

Piers nodded. He dropped the poker with a careless clatter and stretched his arms high above his head. "You once said something to me about the Hand of the Sculptor," he said. "Well, if He wants to do any shaping so far as I am concerned, now is His time. I am willing to be shaped."

"What do you mean?" asked Crowther.

Piers' eyes were half-closed, and there was a drawn look about the lids as of a man in pain. "I mean, my good Crowther," he said, "that the mire and clay have ceased to attract me. My house is empty—swept and garnished,—but it is not open to devils at present. You want to know my plans. I haven't any. I am waiting to be taken in hand."

He spoke with a faint smile that moved Crowther to deep compassion. "You will have to be patient a long while, maybe, sonny," he said.

"I can be patient," said Piers. He shifted his position slightly, clasping his hands behind his head, so that his face was in shadow. "You think that is not much like me, Crowther," he said. "But I can wait for a thing if I feel I shall get it in the end. I have felt that—ever since the night after I went down there. She was so desperately ill. She wanted me—just to hold her in my arms." His voice quivered suddenly. He stopped for a few seconds, then went on in a lower tone. "She wasn't—quite herself at the time—or she would never have asked for me. But it made a difference to me all the same. It made me see that possibly—just possibly—there is a reason for things,—that even misery and iron may have their uses—that there may be something behind it all—what?—Something Divine."

He stopped altogether, and pushed his chair further still into shadow.

Crowther was smoking. He did not speak for several seconds, but smoked on with eyes fixed straight before him as though they scanned a far-distant horizon. At length: "I rather think the shaping has begun, sonny," he said. "You don't believe in prayer now?"

"No, I don't," said Piers.

Crowther's eyes came down to him. "Can't you pray without believing?" he said slowly.

Piers made a restless movement. "What should I pray for?"

Crowther was smiling slightly—the smile of a man who has begun to see, albeit afar off, the fulfilment of a beloved project.

"Do you know, old chap," he said, "I expect I seem a fool to you; but it's the fools who confound the wise, isn't it? I believe a thundering lot in prayer. But I didn't always. I prayed without believing for a long time first."

"That seems to me like offering an insult to God," said Piers.

"I don't think He views it in that light," said Crowther, "any more than He blames a blind man for feeling his way. The great thing is to do it—to get started. You're wanting a big thing in life. Well,—ask for it! Don't be afraid of asking! It's what you're meant to do."

He drew a long whiff from his pipe and puffed it slowly forth.

There fell a deep silence between them. Piers sat in absolute stillness, gazing downwards into the fire with eyes still half-closed.

Suddenly he jerked back his head. "It's a bit of a farce, what?" he said. "But I'll do it on your recommendation, I'll give it a six months' trial, and see what comes of it. That's a fair test anyhow. Something ought to turn up in another six months."

He got to his feet with a laugh, and stood in front of Crowther with a species of challenge in his eyes. He looked as if he expected rebuke, and were prepared to meet it with arrogance.

But Crowther uttered neither reproach nor admonition. He met the look with the utmost kindliness—the most complete understanding.

"Something will turn up, lad," he said, with steady conviction. "But not—probably—in the way you expect."

Piers' face showed a momentary surprise. "How on earth do you know?" he said.

"I do know," Crowther made steadfast reply; but he offered no explanation for his confidence.

Piers thrust out an impulsive hand. "You may be right and you may not; but you've been a brick to me, old fellow," he said, a note of deep feeling in his voice,—"several kinds of a brick, and I'm not likely to forget it. If you ever get into the Church, you'll be known as the parson who doesn't preach, and it'll be a reputation to be proud of."

Crowther's answering grip was the grip of a giant. There was a great tenderness in the far-seeing grey eyes as he made reply. "It would be rank presumption on my part to preach to you, lad. You are made of infinitely finer stuff than I."

"Oh, rats!" exclaimed Piers in genuine astonishment.

But the elder man shook his head with a smile. "No; facts, Piers!" he said. "There are greater possibilities in you than I could ever attain to."

"Possibilities for evil then," said Piers, with a very bitter laugh.

Crowther looked him straight in the eyes. "And possibilities for good, my son," he said. "They grow together, thank God."



PART III

THE OPEN HEAVEN



CHAPTER I

THE VERDICT

"It's much better than learning by heart," said Jeanie, with her tired little smile. "Somehow, you know, I can't learn by heart—at least not long things. Father says it is because my brain is deficient. But Mother says hers is just the same, so I don't mind so much."

"My dear, it will take you hours to read through all this," said Avery, surveying with dismay the task which the Vicar had set his small daughter.

"Yes," said Jeanie. "I am to devote three hours of every day to it. I had to promise I would." She gave a short sigh. "It's very good for me, you know," she said.

"Is it?" said Avery. She smoothed back the brown hair lovingly. "You mustn't overwork, Jeanie darling," she said.

"I can't help it," said Jeanie quietly. "You see, I promised."

That she would keep her promise, whatever the cost, was evidently a foregone conclusion; and Avery could say nothing against it.

She left the child to work therefore, and wandered down herself to the shore.

It was June. A soft breeze came over the sea, salt and pure, with the life-giving quality of the great spaces. She breathed it deeply, thankfully, conscious of returning strength.

She and Jeanie had arrived only the week before, and she was sure their visit was going to do wonders for them both. Her own convalescence had been a protracted one, but she told herself as she walked along the beach towards the smiling, evening sea that she was already stronger than her companion. The old lassitude was evidently very heavy upon Jeanie. The smallest exertion seemed to tax her energies to the utmost. She had never shaken off her cough, and it seemed to wear her out.

Avery had spoken to Lennox Tudor about her more than once, but he never discussed the subject willingly. He was never summoned to the Vicarage now, and, when they chanced to meet, the Vicar invariably reserved for him the iciest greeting that courtesy would permit. Tudor had defeated him once on his own ground, and he was not the man to forget it. So poor Jeanie's ailments were given none but home treatment to alleviate them, and it seemed to Avery that her strength had dwindled almost perceptibly of late.

She pondered the matter as she strolled along the shore, debating with herself if she would indeed take a step that she had been contemplating for some time, and, now that Jeanie was in her care, take her up to town and obtain Maxwell Wyndham's opinion with regard to her. It was a project she had mentioned to no one, and she hesitated a good deal over putting it into practice. That Mrs. Lorimer would readily countenance such an act she well knew, but she was also aware that it would be regarded as a piece of rank presumption by the child's father which might easily be punished by the final withdrawal of Jeanie from her care. That was a contingency which she hardly desired to risk. Jeanie had become so infinitely precious to her in those days.

Unconsciously her feet had turned towards their old haunt. She found herself halting by the low square rock on which Piers once had sat and cursed the sea-birds in bitterness of spirit. Often as she had visited the spot since, she had never done so without the memory of that spring morning flashing unbidden through her brain. It went through her now like a sharp dart of physical pain; the boyish figure, the ardent eyes, the black hair plastered wet on the wide, patrician brow. Her heart contracted. She seemed to hear again the eager, wooing words.

He never wrote to her now. She believed he was in town, probably amusing himself as he had amused himself at Monte Carlo, passing the time in a round of gaieties, careless flirtations, possibly deeper intrigues. Crowther had probably kept him straight through the winter, but she did not believe that Crowther's influence would be lasting. There was a sting in the very thought of Crowther. She was sure now that he had always known the bitter secret that Piers had kept from her. It had been the bond between them. Piers had obviously feared betrayal, but Crowther had not deemed it his business to betray him. He had suffered the deception to continue. She recognized that his position had been a difficult one; but it did not soften her heart towards him. Her heart had grown hard towards all men of late. She sometimes thought that but for Jeanie it would have atrophied altogether. There were so few things nowadays that seemed to touch her. She could not even regret her lost baby. But yet the memory of Piers sitting on that rock at her feet pierced her oddly; Piers, the passionate, the adoring, the hot-blooded; Piers the invincible; Piers the prince!

She turned from the spot with a wrung feeling of heart-break. She wished—how she wished—that she had died!

In that moment she realized that she was no longer alone. A man's figure, thick-set and lounging, was sauntering towards her along the sand. He seemed to move with extreme leisureliness, yet his approach was but a matter of seconds. His hands were in his pockets, his hat rammed down over his eyes.

There seemed to her to be something vaguely familiar about him, though wherein it lay she could not have told. She stood and awaited him with the certainty that he was coming with the express purpose of joining her. She knew him; she was sure she knew him, though who he was she had not the faintest idea.

He reached her, lifted his cap, and the sun glinted on a head of fiery red hair. "I thought I was not mistaken, Lady Evesham," he said.

She recognized him with an odd leap of the pulses, and in a moment held out her hand. "Dr. Wyndham!" she said. "How amazing!"

"Why amazing?" said Wyndham. He held her hand for a second while his green eyes scanned her face. When he dropped it she felt that he had made a full and exhaustive inspection, and she was strangely disconcerted, as if in some fashion he had gained an unfair advantage over her.

"Amazing that you should be here," she explained, with a flush of embarrassment.

"Oh, not in the least, I assure you," he said. "I am staying at Brethaven for a couple of days with my wife's people. It's only ten miles away, you know. And I bicycled over here on the chance of seeing you."

"But how did you know I was here?" she asked.

"From your husband. I told him I was coming in this direction, and he suggested that I should come over and look you up." Very casually he made reply, and he could not have been aware of the flood of colour his words sent to her face, for he continued in the same cool fashion as he strolled by her side. "I was afraid you might consider it an unpardonable liberty, but he assured me you wouldn't. So—" the green eyes smiled upon her imperturbably—"as I am naturally interested in your welfare, I took my courage in both hands and, at the risk of being considered unprofessional,—I came."

It was unexpected, but it was disarming. Avery found herself smiling in answer.

"I am very pleased to see you," she said. "But your coming just at this time is rather amazing all the same, for I was thinking of you, wishing I could see you, only a few minutes ago."

"What can I do for you?" said Maxwell Wyndham.

She hesitated a little before the direct question; then as simply as he had asked she answered, laying the matter before him without reservation.

He listened in his shrewd, comprehending way, asking one or two questions, but making no comments.

"There need be no difficulty about it," he said, when she ended. "You say the child is tractable. Keep her in bed to-morrow, and say a medical friend of yours is coming over to see if he can do anything for her cough! Then if you'll ask me to lunch—I'll do the rest."

He smiled as he ended, and thrust out his hand.

"I'll be going now. I left my bicycle in the village and hope to find it still there. Now remember, Lady Evesham, my visit to-morrow is to be of a strictly unprofessional character. You didn't send for me, so I shall assume the privilege of coming as a friend. Is that understood?"

He spoke with smiling assurance, and seeing that he meant to gain his point she yielded it.

Not till he was gone did she come to ponder the errand that had brought him thither.

She went back to Jeanie, and found her with aching eyes fixed resolutely on her book. Yes, she was a little tired, but she would rather go on, thank you. Oh no, she did not mind staying in bed to-morrow to please Avery, and she was sure she would like Avery's doctor though she didn't expect he would manage to stop the cough. She would have to do her task though all the same; dear Avery mustn't mind. You see, she had promised. But she would certainly stay in bed if Avery wished.

And then came the tired sigh, and then that racking, cruel cough that seemed to rend her whole frame. No, she would not finish for another hour yet. Really she must go on.

The brown head dropped on to the little bony hands, and Jeanie was immersed once more in her task.

More than once in the night Avery awoke to hear that tearing, breathless cough in the room next to hers. It was no new thing, but in view of the coming ordeal it filled her with misgiving.

When she rose herself in the morning she felt weighed down with anxious foreboding.

Yet, when Maxwell Wyndham arrived in his sauntering, informal fashion at about noon, she was able to meet him with courage. There was something electric about his personality that seemed almost unconsciously to impart strength to the downhearted. He had drawn her back from the very Door of Death, and her confidence in him was absolute.

They lunched alone together, and talked of many things. More than once, wholly incidentally, he mentioned her husband. She gathered that he did not know of their bitter estrangement. He talked of the polo-craze, with which it seemed Piers was badly bitten, and commented on his splendid horsemanship.

"Yes, he is a wonderful athlete," Avery said.

She wondered if he deemed her unresponsive, but decided that he set her coldness down to anxiety; for he finished his luncheon without lingering and declared himself ready for the business in hand.

He became in fact strictly business-like from that moment, and throughout the examination that followed she had not the faintest notion as to what was passing in his mind. To Jeanie he was curtly kind, but to herself he was as utterly uncommunicative as if he had been a total stranger.

The examination was a protracted one, and more painful than Avery had thought possible. It taxed poor Jeanie's powers of endurance to the uttermost, and long before it was finished she was weeping from sheer exhaustion. He was absolutely patient with her, but he insisted upon carrying the matter through, remaining when it was at last over until she had somewhat recovered from the ordeal.

To Avery the suspense was well-nigh unbearable; but she dared not show the impatience that consumed her. She had a feeling that in some fashion the great doctor was depending upon her self-control, her strength of mind; and she was determined that he should not find her wanting.

Yet, when she at length preceded him downstairs and into the little sitting-room she wondered if the hammering of her heart reached him, so tremendous were its strokes. They seemed to her to be beating out a death-knell in her soul.

"You will tell me the simple truth, I know," she said, and waited, straining to catch his words above the clamour.

He answered her instantly with the utmost quietness, the utmost kindness.

"Lady Evesham, your own heart has already told you the truth."

She put out a quick hand, and he took it and held it firmly, sustainingly, while he went on.

"There is nothing whatever to be done. Give her rest, that's all; absolute rest. She looks as if she has been worked beyond her strength. Is that so?"

Avery nodded mutely.

"It must stop," he said. "She is in a very precarious state, and any exertion, mental or physical, is bound to hasten the end—which cannot, in any case, be very far off."

He released Avery's hand and walked to the window, where he stood gazing out to sea with drawn brows.

"The disease is of a good many months' standing," he said. "It has taken very firm hold. Such a child as that should have been sheltered and cosseted, shielded from every hardship. Even then—very possibly—this would have developed. No one can say for certain."

"Can you advise—nothing?" said Avery in a voice that sounded oddly dull and emotionless even to herself.

"Nothing," said Maxwell Wyndham. "No medical science can help in a case like this. Give her everything she wants, and give her rest! That is all you can do for her now."

Avery came and stood beside him. The blow had fallen, but she had scarcely begun to feel its effects. There was so much to be thought of first.

"Please be quite open with me!" she said. "Tell me how long you think she will live!"

He turned slightly and looked at her. "I can tell you what I think, Lady Evesham," he said. "But, remember, that does not bring the end any nearer."

"I know," she said.

She looked straight back at him with eyes unflinching, and after a moment's thought he spoke.

"I think that—given every care—she may live through the summer, but I do not consider it likely."

Avery's face was very pale, but still she did not flinch. "Will she suffer?" she asked.

He raised his brows at the question. "My dear lady, she has suffered already far more than you have any idea of. One lung is practically gone, wholly useless. The other is rapidly going the same way. She has probably suffered for a year or more, first lassitude, then shortness of breath, and pretty often actual pain. Hasn't she complained of these things?"

"She is a child who never complains," Avery said. "But both her mother and I thought she was wasting."

"She is mere skin and bone," he said. "Now—about her people, Lady Evesham; who is going to tell them? You or I?"

She hesitated. "But I could hardly ask you to do that," she said.

"You may command me in any way," he answered. "If I may presume to advise, I should say that the best course would be for me to go to Rodding, see the doctor there, and get him to take me to the Vicarage."

"Oh, but they mustn't take her from me!" Avery said. "Let her mother come here! She can't—she mustn't—go back home!"

"Exactly what I was going to say," he returned, in his quiet practical fashion. "To take her back there would be madness. But look here, Lady Evesham, you must have a nurse."

"Oh, not yet!" said Avery. "I am quite strong now. I am used to nursing. I have—no other call upon me. Let me do this!"

"None?" he said.

His tone re-called her. She coloured burningly. "My husband—would understand," she said, with difficulty.

He passed the matter by. "Will you promise to send me a message if you find night-nursing a necessity?"

She hesitated.

He frowned. "Lady Evesham, you must promise me this in fairness to the child as well as to yourself. Also, you will give me your word that you will never under any circumstances sleep with her."

She saw that he would have his way, and she yielded both points rather than fight a battle which instinct warned her she could not win.

"Then I will be going," he said.

He turned back into the room, and again she was aware of his green eyes surveying her closely, critically. But he made no reference whatever to her health, and inwardly she blessed him for his forbearance.